Dane Kamljen's All the Cities of the North is a beguiling experience; a challenging film due to its complex formalism and ambiguous design which explores the crossroads in which individual and collective desires converge. Shrouded in minimalism, All The Cities of the North features absolutely no dialogue between its character, individuals who live in an abandoned complex, relying only off-screen narration to provide the audience with much of the film's deeper thematic assertions. All The Cities of the North explored concepts related to man's place among nature, the detachment we have built, evoking the isolation and desolation through a palatable aesthetic where plot is essentially non-existent. Politically, the film speaks about how the individual and the collective clash in any form of social order, detailing through this opaque love story how authority often subverts or mutates love, an assertion that applies to not only these characters but humanity as a whole. The federal commission, corporations, and government entities are all one in the same, various power structures that have impacted the region of Serbia, distorting the will of the people. Visually the visual design elicits the concepts of the film, with beautiful use of mise-en-scene where the structures in which these characters exist find themselves accentuated in every composition, characters themselves which represent the failings of these various power structures.
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AuthorLove of all things cinema brought me here. Archives
June 2023
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